Who Would’ve Won If This Had Been A Presidential Election?

I know this is a totally useless exercise, but since President Trump made this midterm election basically a referendum on him, who would’ve won if he had been running for reelection?

Time magazine has tried to answer that question. They used the results for the House of Representatives races as votes for the president of the same party. In this exercise, a hypothetical Democrat would’ve won with 284 electoral votes (recall that 270 votes wins). Overall, Democratic House candidates tallied almost six million more votes than Republicans nationwide. The difference-makers were Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin and Iowa, which all went for Trump in 2016, but this time garnered more Democratic votes.

Of course, candidate personalities always play a huge role in any presidential election. But with the turnout this time being an estimated 114 million people, which is reasonably close to the 137 million who voted two years ago, this exercise is in the realistic range.

So for all you political junkies, it’s certainly something to think about.